


Nothing Makes A Room Feel Emptier Than Wanting Someone In It

by Krasimer



Series: The Longest Roads Stretch Away [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BUT NOW HE DOES, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Jiraiya is his goddamned godfather, Memories, Naruto is Just Naruto, Naruto's hero is his father and he didn't know, Orphans, Parents, Photographs, Sad, Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto Friendship, Unless he Does Not Care, We are who we love in a way, Why the fuck wasn't he there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 17:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18526141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: Fight Me.I wanted to change this aspect of canon most of all -- why the hell did they keep Naruto from ever knowing who his dad was?  I want to smack Sarutobi Hiruzen so much. My dude, you fucked up a small child, look at him, you gave him abandonment issues and anxiety.And unless Jiraiya just actively Didn't Give A Fuck, why wasn't he around for Naruto?So here's my answer to that. With the timeline alteration, he felt it necessary to tell him this time.





	Nothing Makes A Room Feel Emptier Than Wanting Someone In It

Training with Jiraiya was interesting.

The guy was about a billion years old, but he managed to be funny in a way Naruto liked. He was a pervert and he slept too much and he drank a lot, but he taught him useful things. They didn’t always seem useful at the time – boring and time-wasting, in the moment – but when the steps were all put together, it was _awesome._ Iruka-sensei had been great, had been the closest thing to a big brother Naruto had ever had, but Jiraiya was…Different.

Like he knew what the driving force inside of him was like, like he knew how strong it was and how often he felt like he was going to vibrate out of his skin.

Gamabunta was a jerk and he yelled at Naruto the few times he managed to summon him, but he was cool too.

(He didn’t want to say it out loud, but Gamabunta reminded him of Sakura-chan, just a little. Bossy and loud and angry at him sometimes. He knew they were both happier to see him than they pretended they were, even if Sakura didn’t really like him all that much in the first place. He’d fallen asleep one night, listening to Jiraiya talking to Gamabunta. The old man had said something about being proud of him.)

He missed Sasuke.

He missed Sakura, too, and Iruka-sensei and Kakashi-sensei, but he missed Sasuke a lot. They’d become better friends, recently. Their rivalry had calmed down and he’d stopped acting like Naruto was an annoyance and nothing else.

(It was probably his big brother – Sasuke’s entire world had been knocked over. Everything had been unsettled and Sasuke, for the first time since Naruto had met him, had cried after the Chuunin exams. He had just…Dropped his face into Naruto’s shoulder and held onto him. They hadn’t talked about it, after that, but he and Sasuke had gotten along _better_ in some way he couldn’t really explain.)

“Hey, Naruto,” Jiraiya’s voice interrupted his thoughts and he squirmed around until he could look at the man. The look on his face was worrying, but he didn’t seem like he was going to attack or yell at him.

“Yeah?”

He sat down before he spoke again, a piece of paper clutched in his hand. “Part of why I was so ready to train you, so willing…” he sighed, putting his empty hand over his eyes for a second. Something Naruto could identify as Kyuubi flared up, suspicious, but he nudged it away again. “There’s something that’s been kept from you, kid. Something important. Something big.” He took a deep breath, his lips pinching together in a way that reminded Naruto of Iruka. The teacher had always tried his best to say bad news in a nice way.

“What did I do?” Naruto couldn’t stop himself from asking.

Jiraiya, for his part in things, looked startled for a second before leaning back a bit. “What? Nothing. You didn’t do anything.”

“Is it something I can help with?”

“No—Yes—” Jiraiya held up his hand. “Ssh. Let me talk, kid.”

Naruto sat up, folding his legs underneath him. He could already feel his mind trying to wander, his attention grabbed by the sounds of birds he didn’t recognize, but he did his best. Jiraiya nodded after a moment, sighing again.

“Do you know anything about your parents?”

That grabbed all of his attention back. “I…No,” Naruto stared down at his hands, curling them together in his lap. “I know my last name was one of theirs, not something given by the Hokage or anything like that. That’s all I know, really. I don’t even know who they were.” He shifted again, his knees curling into his chest. That had been how it always went. Whenever he felt too sad, he curled up into the smallest shape possible. Like he was trying to hide from the world.

It had made a couple of people angry, before, but it had never been anything other than comforting for him.

(Sasuke had asked him about it, once. Had told him that he slept like that when they were somewhere unfamiliar.)

Jiraiya nodded. “Well. Shit.” He rubbed at his forehead, for a moment, then looked up at Naruto again. “Your mother’s name was Kushina. Uzumaki Kushina. Wonderful woman, didn’t put up with any of your father’s crap. She’d keep him in line and she was the best thing to happen to him.”

“You knew them?”

“Kid,” Jiraiya paused again. “I taught your dad. He was my student. Yes, I knew him, yes I knew her – Naruto, I should have been there when you were growing up.” He held up the piece of paper, staring at it for a minute, silent and too still in a way that usually meant someone was going to do something bad to him. “Here,” he let his arm reach out, handing it off.

It was a photo.

There were three kids and a much younger Jiraiya on it, smiling at the camera. One of them was a blond boy who, from what he could tell, looked a lot like him. “Is that—” he looked up at Jiraiya. “Is that my dad?”

“The blond?” Jiraiya leaned a little closer. “Yeah, that’s him. Listen, something _really_ important was kept from you. I don’t…I don’t exactly know why, but it was. I’m—” he sighed, one more time, then nodded. “This is hard to say. I don’t know if I’m the best person to say it or if this is even the best _way_ to say it.” He buried his face in his palms for a second. “I’m your godfather. Until not too long ago, I hadn’t thought you’d survived the attack on the village when you were a baby.”

“Oh,” Naruto looked down at the photo in his hands again, then back up at Jiraiya. “I mean…I didn’t grow up too badly. Iruka-sensei is really nice and I…I managed to make a couple of friends. Sakura-chan and Sasuke and a couple of the others are actually kind of nice.”

“I—” Jiraiya tipped his head back growled for a moment, muttering something just a little too quiet for Naruto to head. “Not what I’m trying to say.”

“Then what are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to tell you who your dad was!” Jiraiya’s head snapped back upright and he glared at a spot on the ground, sort of in the distance. “And I don’t know the best way to do that – how do you tell a kid that their father, your previous student, was the fourth Hokage?!”

The silence that fell after those words almost felt like a blanket had been tossed over the world.

Naruto’s eyes were wide and he wasn’t breathing for a minute, his mouth open as if he had been about to reassure Jiraiya in some way. When he did breathe again, it was in a rush of air as his brain started working again. “My dad –”

“That was not the way I wanted to tell you that,” Jiraiya winced. “Tsunade is going to have my…” he shook his head. “No. I need to…Fuck.”

“My dad was the fourth Hokage,” Naruto stuttered over the words, squeaking a little as he said them. His hands shook, trembling gently as he looked at the photo again. “My dad…” he laughed a little, holding the photo even closer. “What was he like?”

“A good kid,” Jiraiya managed after a second. “Liked pranks – you come by it honestly, from what I’ve heard – and he hated it when anyone was given second-best treatment. He went a little crazy over a girl from another genin team, though – your mom. I thought she was going to kick him so hard he’d never be able to have kids. He pranked her a bit, tried flirting horribly, but he figured out, eventually, that all he needed to do was talk to her.”

Naruto nodded, almost not listening, as he continued to trace his fingers over the photo of his father’s face. “He’s been my hero all my life,” he whispered after a while. “Brave, gave up his life to save his people.” He looked up at Jiraiya. “He’s why I want to be Hokage – because it means you can protect everyone.”

“He was always like that too,” Jiraiya laughed a little, tears welling up in his eyes. “He wanted to keep everyone safe, even if they’d hurt him at some point. He was a good kid, grew up to be a good man.”

Naruto laughed a little as well, tears rolling down his face, though he tried to hide them. “And my mom – do you know anything about her?”

“Smart. Brilliant, actually. Unwilling to put up with any bullshit from anyone around her. If someone got special treatment, she questioned it and made them explain why they thought they were better than anyone else,” Jiraiya pulled a couple more photos out of one of his pouches. They were a little crinkled, somewhat yellowed from age and exposure to the elements. They had traveled with him. “Here.”

The one on the top of the stack was of a teenaged pair, a young woman with bright red hair and the same blond that Naruto could now identify as the fourth Hokage. “Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina.” Jiraiya said as Naruto flipped through the stack. “Kushina was from the Whirlpool village, originally. You might have some cousins out there, somewhere.” He tapped one of the photos, pulling it from the middle of the stack. Minato was wearing an embroidered kimono, a grin on his face to rival Naruto’s own. Kushina had a beautiful dress on, flowers in her hair.

“Is this their wedding?”

“Yeah,” Jiraiya smiled, the expression not quite reaching his eyes. “Your mother was already pregnant with you, then. Hard to see, but her stomach is a little bumped-out because you’re in there.” He pointed towards Kushina. “This is technically the only photo of the three of you together, I guess.”

Holding the photos protectively against his chest, Naruto drooped back against his bedroll. “Can I hold onto these tonight?” he peered at Jiraiya over the edge of the small stack. “I just want to look at them.”

“Kid,” Jiraiya shook his head. “I brought them with me so that you could keep them. I have another copy of my team’s photo somewhere else – the rest were meant to belong to you.” He stood up, hesitating awkwardly next to the child he was supposed to have raised. “I’ll leave you to it. If there’s anything you want to know, just come ask me.”

They both pretended not to notice Naruto crying as he looked through the photos of his parents.

**Author's Note:**

> Fight Me. 
> 
> I wanted to change this aspect of canon most of all -- why the hell did they keep Naruto from ever knowing who his dad was? I want to smack Sarutobi Hiruzen so much. My dude, you fucked up a small child, look at him, you gave him abandonment issues and anxiety.
> 
> And unless Jiraiya just actively Didn't Give A Fuck, why wasn't he around for Naruto? 
> 
> So here's my answer to that. With the timeline alteration, he felt it necessary to tell him this time.


End file.
